be a time lord

Or at least, I’m trying to learn how to not let time rule me instead!

Being a corporate rat for the last 11 years made me learn harsh lessons over and over again and that is;

• Planning your day/week/month/year is underrated. Don’t skip it, don’t take it lightly, do it
• Overestimating my self-will and energy level trips me up every damn time
• And more importantly (and rather ironically), there comes a point when you need to stop the obsessive planning and start obsessively doing!

It’s easy to let the rhythmic lull of setting up your planner pages, playing with your new Hobonichi (ahem) distract you from doing the work but in this post I’d like to talk about point #2 i.e. not overestimating my time.

Doing lists I’ve realised, is wonderful. It sets out in a clear, structured way what you need to get done. The only problem? You end up putting 5-10 items from your awesomely done overall work plan and at the end of the day, 3 or heck, 9 items are still not crossed off and you get annoyed and push the list to the next day and you know what? A week later and most of those items are still there!

For me, I’ve realised it’s because I always think I can do more and routinely refuse to recognise that interruptions happen, your own will weakens throughout the day and sometimes, shit just happens. So I played around a bit with Chronodex etc whathaveyou and here’s I think, what really works for me;

• Plan your day on a clock-face type of schedule. Whether you’re a Chronodex-er or whatever, do it. Doing it on a clock face forces you to really see that your day isn’t that long.
• Plan to do at most, 2-3 items. It’s fine, trust me. Because that feeling you get when you crossed off that 3 items and have time to do 1 more? Fantastic, baby.

And to make things even more interesting, I’ve come up with the layout below because I’m particular about things. I like realistically planning my day but I would also like it that my scheudle doesn’t take up half the page of my planner and leave me with too little room for notes. So my day is laid out in 1-hour blocks, and each block takes up 2 grid blocks of the Hobonichi page so I can schedule in half-hour length work/meetings. And the beauty is that I still get a type of clock-face, reality-driven scheduling and it’s neat and pretty.

Neat and pretty fuels my soul.